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Read Concrete Island (2001)

Concrete Island (2001)

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Genre
Rating
3.71 of 5 Votes: 3
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ISBN
031242034X (ISBN13: 9780312420345)
Language
English
Publisher
picador

Concrete Island (2001) - Plot & Excerpts

forse qualcosa anticipo, da leggere con circospezione!Robert Maitland �� un architetto londinese che, lanciato al volante della sua jaguar mentre torna a casa, �� vittima di un incidente stradale, a seguito del quale si trova ad essere prigioniero di un'isola spartitraffico, sottostante i piloni di cemento, all'incrocio tra tre autostrade.l'isola di cemento �� un luogo coperto da vegetazione selvatica, pneumatici e auto abbandonate e dove c'�� persino un vecchio cinema in disuso: insomma, �� terra di nessuno.Robert Maitland stesso non �� atteso da nessuno: quando non �� a casa con la moglie questa sa che �� dall'amante e viceversa, quando non �� al lavoro la segretaria sa che probabilmente si �� recato all'improvviso da qualche cliente.Nessuno lo cerca.Gi�� dalle prime pagine la sensazione �� strana: il mio primo pensiero, purtroppo condizionata dai tempi saturi di tecnologia che viviamo, �� stato: ma che non ce l'ha un cellulare?Ma dopo aver visto che il romanzo �� del 1974, ho rinunciato ad ogni velleit�� razionalista e mi sono abbandonata alla storia trovandomi anch'io prigioniera dell'isola con Maitland.L'atmosfera �� claustrofobica, nonostate tutta la vicenda si svolga all'aperto, perch�� Maitland non �� vittima solamente del luogo ma anche della propria vita e dei propri pensieri.il dramma �� soprattutto interiore perch�� pi�� il tempo passa e pi�� il protagonista comincia a mettere in discussione l'esistenza condotta fino a quel momento, sembrando avviarsi ad una imminente redenzione e ad una fuga dall'isola di cemento rinnovato nello spirito.Ma il novello Robinson Crusoe non ha ancora fatto i conti con gli indigeni dell'isola, non ha ancora incontrato i suoi Venerd��, che si materializzeranno all'improvviso nelle figure di Proctor e Jane: un ex acrobata del circo e una ragazza di strada e che gli faranno scoprire un altro se stesso.Da cosa fugge Maitlan, ed �� proprio sicuro di voler fuggire dai suoi fantasmi?Mi �� piaciuto?S�� e no. Mi �� piaciuto lo spunto narrativo e mi �� piaciuta la scrittura di Ballard, dai suoi romanzi sono stati realizzati due capolavori cinematografici come L'impero del sole di Steven Spielberg e Crash di Paul Haggis, ma poi mi �� sembrato si perdesse un po' per strada rischiando di diventare inconcludente e di tralasciare tutti quei simboli e quei messaggi di speranza disseminati nella prima parte della storia.Insomma le mie tre stelline non sono proprio piene, oscillano continuamente verso il basso :-)Tornando all'attualit��, ieri ho capito che forse non �� poi tanto inverosimile questa storia:http://www.libero-news.it/adnkronos/v... Legigamo VI gruppo di lettura all'interno del gruppo Maddecheaoh!!!http://www.anobii.com/anobi/forum_thr...

3.5 stars. Not SF as I ordinarily think of it, more a quasi dystopia set in the present-day. Affluent Robert Maitland crashes his Jaguar on a precipitous traffic island such as we see all the time occupying the waste ground between ramps and highways. He climbs the grade to street level, but the traffic's too fast and there are no shoulders. He struck in the hand by an oblivious passing motorist. Then inflammation and sets in; his injuries keep him feverish in the wrecked Jag. When he's ambulatory again, though barely, the island begins to reveal heretofore unsuspected features. Maitland comes across the foundations of an old suburban neighborhood razed long ago to make way for the interchange. He discovers the basements of old rowhouses, a cinema, Cold War-era air-raid shelters, a breaker's yard, etc. Then he realizes he's not alone. By this time, though he won't admit it, or won't accept it--his position is never made entirely clear--he doesn't want to leave the traffic island. Memories of his previous existence--his lovers, profession, friends--grow hazy, distant. The writing is almost wholly vivid description. If anything, it might be said to be overly described. This leaves the reader with an almost vertiginous effect, as if the traffic island were somehow in motion, instead of static. (It's times like these when I realize I read too closely. Certainly the breezy reader, rushing ever onward solely for the sake of plot, would hardly notice.) Except for a rare turgid patch where a metaphor or a bit of description doesn't quite work, the novel is highly readable. I think Ballard's later stories and especially his first memoir, Empire of the Sun, show a subtler writer at work, but Concrete Island is hardly amateurish. It simply represents an earlier stage in his artistic development, and for those of us who like to track a writer's themes and obsessions over time, it may be all the more interesting because of that. Highly recommended.

What do You think about Concrete Island (2001)?

Unaccountably, and nearly alone among Ballard's novels, I'd never before read this companion piece to his other great early-70s urban nightmares "Crash" and "High Rise". Envisaged as a contemporary update on "Robinson Crusoe", it follows Defoe in imagining how a 'civilised' man - in this case Maitland, a Jaguar-driving, Burgundy-drinking architect - might adapt to being translated to an existence in which he has to find the means of survival on an inhospitable island, unable to communicate with his own society and dependent on luck, his wits, and the goodwill of someone from a completely alien culture with whom he is thrown together. In this case, however, the island is a patch of waste land in the middle of a motorway interchange, and Maitland's "Man Friday" a pair of equally ill-matched outcasts in the form of a brain-damaged vagrant and a partially-deranged prostitute on the run from a husband and her creditors, both of whom have been living there for an unspecified time and turned their isolation to advantage.The three characters articulate themselves as both sympathetic and monstrous, their situations simultaneously absurd and chillingly believable. There is no authorial psychologising, yet the principal movement of the novel is that of Maitland from cast-away victim, stranger in a strange land, to a resurgent alpha-male using the same sense of entitlement and superiority he doubtless exercised over his business, wife, and mistress, to dominate the existing inhabitants of the island and gain its sole possession - even though he knows that this will probably kill him. The inner reality of the man becomes the outer environment in which he lives, and vice-versa, a truth which Ballard was to explore obsessively throughout his career. The cityscapes and waste ground, the roads and wreckers' yards, the disused cinemas and tyre-dumps, these are the simultaneously familiar and alien landmarks of our contemporary psyche, as well as the physical furniture of the exterior world in which we live and somehow manage to function. As Maitland observes at one point, the island was in him long before he came to the island. It's both his prison and the archaeology of his soul.
—Phil

When Robert Maitland comes off the road in his Jaguar he is shocked but uninjured. He is instantly confident that he will be rescued in no time. However his escape from the triangle of waste ground, surrounded on all sides by motorway, is much more elusive than he could ever have imagined. Ballard writes exhilarating prose telling the story of how Maitland quickly descends into madness, as he finds himself totally isolated from the world he knows. I think the key of this book lies in the repetition within the narrative, reoccurring thoughts and multiple thwarted attempts to escape carry you through the multi-layered story. I loved this book. Even though it was written four decades ago, it’s theme of intense isolation in the middle of a vibrant metropolis still remains brutally relevant to contemporary Britain. Arguably, if anyone were to attempt an unnecessary twenty first century rewrite, the ubiquitous nature of mobile communication would prove a slight stumbling block to the story-telling. However, I think the idea that we all carry on following our own well-trodden path, without noticing those around us, works well for a digital-age reading. tConcrete Island explores ideas of social status and how we all dismiss the underclass, not treating them with the basic human compassion that we extend to most in our lives. It is how quickly Maitland slips out of view and out of the comforting hammock of society, which is so terrifyingly enthralling.
—Andrew

Traveling west from New York City, to Newark Airport or down the coast or inland and away, on a PATH train or New Jersey Transit or in a car on the highway, you first have to cross the Meadowlands. Crisscrossed by old and new transit options and little else, this stretch of marshes and landfill mounds has become an entirely liminal space, a place designed only to be passed through without stopping. Naturally, I've become fascinated with this empty overlooked space as a destination, a place to wander and spend time -- and if crossed, only on foot. This often leaves me in conflict with the general planning or lack thereof of the terrain, leaping crash barriers to dart across empty Garden State Parkway ramps, or ducking between concrete parapets beneath highway overpasses. Real solitude, even so close to NYC, can be found in the boggy overgrown triangles that these features cut out of the landscape. These are places I seek out.I do so by choice. But what if someone found themselves in one of the these lost zones against their will, victim of a motor accident, trapped by speeding traffic, barriers, and the semi-wild post-human landscape? These were places not meant to hold people, so why would anyone think to look for anyone in one? They're not made to be moved in without a car or train, so how easy would it be for the uninitiated to get out? This is Ballard's scenario, an ordinary man immobilized into one such Concrete Island cut out of the city by its mobility-infrastructure and unable to escape, a survival story ironically within a stones throw of all manner of normal modern life. It's oddly believable -- I've seen these spaces, spent time in them: they aren't meant for people. Couple this perfect conceptual terrain, so near to my own weird heart, with a generally quick and incisive narrative and crisp evocative description of the detritus of modernity, and this is up with Crash in Ballard's solid mid-70s not-really-sci-fi high point (as far as I can tell so far). Fantastic.
—Nate D

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